Changes in technology, student expectations, collaboration efforts, intellectual property regimes, and economic funding of research are causing significant shifts in the infrastructure of the university enterprise.
Shoshana Zuboff, emeritus professor at Harvard Business School, and her husband, James Maxmin, have assembled a reasonably convincing argument that the nature of the capitalist economy is changing. The movement from a centralized capitalist market to a more federated network structure signifies a quite different set of operating rules for continued market viability.
Along another related path, the American Research University has experienced severe loss in terms of government funding for research activities. US science and technology research policy have drifted away from basic research and embraced a strongly applied focus. As cutbacks are experienced, institutions turn to private and industry sources of funding. To a large extent, the infrastructure of the university must mirror that of the funding source in order to remain a recipient of sponsorship.
Applying Zuboff and Maxmin's eleven metaprinciples of the Support Economy to the infrastructural transformation of the research university, how does this shift affect the future direction of the institution? Will the university transform from institution to enterprise? As suggested by a number of members of the National Academies of Science, is the tradition of universities as centralized bastilles of knowledge an organizational form losing relevance? Will a federation of higher education services emerge to take its place, and what policy platforms, technologies, and incentive structures are needed to ensure a smooth transition?
These questions served as the basis for my precandidacy research project, and were generated out of a research seminar taken in Winter 2005 with UM emeritus President, James J. Duderstadt. The initial paper is linked below, as well as responses given to evaluations by two faculty members at the School of Information, Dean John L. King and Assistant Professor Steven Jackson.
This line of research is formally being shelved for now; however, I have definite plans to return to it after completion of the PhD program at Michigan. In the meantime, feedback is more then welcome, as I will continue to think about this topic.
Support Economy Research U: Policy Platforms for the Networked Research University Enterprise
Support Economy Research U: Responses to Comments by John L. King
Support Economy Research U: Responses to Comments by Steve Jackson